Article in:
Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict: Online-First Articles

“Maleducados/Ill-mannered” during the #A28 political campaign on Twitter

A metapragmatic study of impoliteness labels and comments in Spanish

| IULMA, Universitat de València
This paper approaches the study of conflict through an examination of Spanish metapragmatic labels and comments of impoliteness on Twitter. The aim is twofold. It first aims to confirm the attributed importance of the label maleducado /ill-mannered in the specific context of Twitter and of digital discourse more generally, on quantitative and comparative grounds; then, it investigates this label, and the metapragmatic comments where it occurred, in a contextualized corpus of tweets compiled during the political campaign of Spain’s General Elections of April 28, 2019. The study draws from five ad hoc corpora specifically compiled from Twitter, and a general corpus of Spanish digital discourse provided by Sketch Engine. The analysis adopts a corpus-based metapragmatic approach, which combines quantitative and qualitative methods. Findings revealed that maleducado was the most frequent metapragmatic label under scrutiny in the Twitter corpora and motivated the subsequent study of lay conceptualizations of this term.
Keywords: conflict, metapragmatics, impoliteness, Spanish, Twitter
Published online: 26 November 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00048.bou
References

References

Agarwal, Amit
n.d. Google Addons. Accessed January 30, 2018. https://​ctrlq​.org/
Albelda Marco, Marta
2007 La intensificación como categoría pragmática: Revisión y propuesta. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Amón, Rubén
2019 “La campaña de la vergüenza.” El País, April 26.Google Scholar
Baker, Paul
2010 Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Bax, Stephen
2011 Discourse and Genre: Using Language in Context. London: Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bernal, María
2007 “Categorización sociopragmática de la cortesía y de la descortesía: Un estudio de la conversación coloquial española.” Ph.D. Diss., Stockholm University. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2008 “El test de hábitos sociales aplicado a la descortesía.” In Cortesía y conversación: De lo escrito a lo oral. III Coloquio internacional Programa EDICE, edited by Antonio Briz, Antonio Hidalgo, Marta Albelda, Josefa Contreras and Nieves Hernández Flores, 623–41. València: Universitat de València.Google Scholar
Blas Arroyo, José Luis
2001 “ ‘No diga chorradas…’ La descortesía en el debate político cara a cara. Una aproximación pragma-variacionista.” Oralia 1: 9–15.Google Scholar
2010 “Niveles en la caracterización de las estrategias discursivas. Aplicaciones al estudio de la descortesía en un corpus mediático.” Español Actual 94: 47–76.Google Scholar
2013 “ ‘No eres inteligente ni para tener amigos …Pues anda que tú! [You’re not even clever enough to have any friends …Look who’s talking!]’: A quantitative analysis of the production and reception of impoliteness in present-day Spanish reality television.” In Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action, edited by Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 218–44. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2014 “Factores condicionantes en la producción y recepción de la descortesía en un reality show. Una aproximación variacionista.” Revista de Filología 32: 17–43.Google Scholar
Bolívar, Adriana
2008 “Perceptions of (Im)politeness in Venezuelan Spanish: The Role of Evaluation in Interaction.” Pragmatics 18: 605–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Boretti, Susan
2003 “Test de hábitos sociales y la investigación de la cortesía.” In Actas del 1er Coloquio del Programa EDICE, edited by Diana Bravo, 198–202. Stockholm: University of Stockholm.Google Scholar
Bou-Franch, Patricia, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2014 “Conflict Management in Massive Polylogues: A Case Study from YouTube.” Journal of Pragmatics 73: 19–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Briz, Antonio
2004 “Cortesía verbal codificada y cortesía verbal interpretada en la conversación.” In Pragmática sociocultural: Estudios sobre el discurso de cortesía en español, edited by Diana Bravo, and Antonio Briz, 67–93. Barcelona: Ariel.Google Scholar
2017 “Otra vez sobre las funciones de la intensificación en la conversación coloquial.” Boletín de Filología 52(2): 37–58. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bublitz, Wolfram
2015 “Introducing Quoting as a Ubiquitous Communicative Act.” In The Pragmatics of Quoting Now and Then, edited by Jenny Arendholz, Wolfram Bublitz, and Monika Kirner-Ludvig, 1–26. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Coesemans, Roel, and Barbara De Cock
2017 “Self-reference by Politicians on Twitter: Strategies to Adapt to 140 Characters.” Journal of Pragmatics 116: 37–50. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Contreras Fernández, Josefa
2008 “Test de hábitos sociales en un análisis contrastivo sobre el uso y la interpretación de la cortesía lingüística. In Cortesía y conversación: De lo escrito a lo oral. III Coloquio internacional Programa EDICE, edited by Antonio Briz, Antonio Hidalgo, Marta Albelda, Josefa Contreras, and Nieves Hernández Flores, 642–56. València: Universitat de València.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan
2005 “Impoliteness and Entertainment in the Television Quiz Show: The Weakest Link .” Journal of Politeness Research 1: 35–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2009 “The Metalanguage of Impoliteness: Using Sketch Engine to Explore the Oxford English Corpus .” In Contemporary Corpus Linguistics, edited by Paul Baker, 64–86. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2011 Impoliteness: Using Language to Cause Offence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, and Claire Hardaker
2016 “Pragmatics.” In Triangulating Methodological Approaches in Corpus Linguistic Research, edited by Paul Baker, and Jesse Egbert, 124–37. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Culpeper, Jonathan, Jim O’Driscoll, and Claire Hardaker
2019 “Notions of Politeness in Britain and North America.” In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives, edited by Eva Ogiermann, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 176–200. New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Cock, Barbara, and Andrea Pizarro Pedraza
2018 “From Expressing Solidarity to Mocking on Twitter: Pragmatic Functions of Hashtags Starting with #jesuis across Languages.” Language in Society 47(2): 197–217. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Downing, Angela, and Phillipe Locke
2006 English Grammar: A University Course. Oxon: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Eelen, Gino
2001 A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St. Jerome.Google Scholar
Fernández García, Francisco
2016 “Mecanismos interaccionales al servicio de la descortesía en el debate político.” Spanish in Context 13(2): 263–84. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fuentes Rodríguez, Catalina
2009 “Descortesía y agresividad bajo el anonimato: Internet.” In Manifestaciones textuales de la descortesía y agresividad verbal en distintos ámbitos comunicativos, edited by Catalina Fuentes Rodríguez, and Esperanza Alcaide Lara, 188–2010. Sevilla: Universidad Internacional de Andalucía.Google Scholar
Gallardo Paúls, Beatriz, and Salvador Enguix Oliver
2016 Pseudopolítica: El discurso político en las redes sociales. Valencia: Universitat de València.Google Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar
2013 “El modelo del género y la des/cortesía clasificatoria de primer orden en las valoraciones de Sálvame por parte de la audiencia.” In (Des)cortesía para el espectáculo: Estudios de pragmática variacionista, edited by Catalina Fuentes, 167–96. Madrid: Arco/Libros.Google Scholar
2018 “Globalization, Transnational Identities, and Conflict Talk: The Superdiversity and Complexity of the Latino Identity.” Journal of Pragmatics 134: 120–133. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, Pilar, Nuria Lorenzo-Dus, and Patricia Bou-Franch
2010 “A Genre Approach to Impoliteness in a Spanish Television Talkshow: Evidence from Corpus-Based Analysis, Questionnaires and Focus Groups.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7(4): 689–723. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haugh, Michael
2013 “Im/politeness, Social Practice and the Participation Order.” Journal of Pragmatics 58: 52–72. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Corpus-Based Metapragmatics.” In Methods in Pragmatics, edited by Andreas H. Jucker, Klaus P. Schneider, and Wolfram Bublitz, 619–43. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “The Metapragmatics of Consideration in (Australian and New Zealand) English.” In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives, edited by Eva Ogiermann, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 221–25. New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Hernández Flores, Nieves
2002 La cortesía en la conversación española de familiares y amigos: La búsqueda del equilibrio entre la imagen del hablante y la imagen del destinatario, Aalborg: Institut for Sprog Internationale Kurturstudier. Aalborg Universitet, vol. 37.Google Scholar
2008 “El test de hábitos sociales en el análisis de debates televisivos.” In Cortesía y conversación: De lo escrito a lo oral. III Coloquio internacional Programa EDICE, edited by Antonio Briz, Antonio Hidalgo, Marta Albelda, Josefa Contreras, and Nieves Hernández Flores, 657–68. València: Universitat de València.Google Scholar
Johansson, Marjut
2019 “Digital and Written Quotations in a News Text: The Hybrid Genre of Political Opinion Review.” In Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions, edited by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 133–62. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Jucker, Andreas H., Taavitsainen, Irma, and Gerold Schneider
2012 “Semantic Corpus Trawling: Expressions of ‘Courtesy’ and ‘Politeness’ in the Helsinki Corpus.” In Developing Corpus Methodology for Historical Pragmatics, edited by Carla Suhr, and Irma Taavitsainen. Helsinki: Research Unit for Variation, Contacts and Change in English. http://​www​.helsinki​.fi​/varieng​/series​/volumes​/11​/jucker​_taavitsainen​_schneider/
Kádár, Dániel, and Michael Haugh
2013 Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kaul de Marganleon, Silvia
2005 “Descortesía de fustigación por afiliación exacerbada o refractariedad. El discurso tanguero de la década del ‘20’.” In Estudios de la (des)cortesía en español. Categorías conceptuales y aplicaciones a corpora orales y escritos, edited by Diana Bravo, 299–318. Buenos Aires: Dunken.Google Scholar
Kilgarriff, Adam, Vit Baisa, Jan Bušta, Miloš Jakubíček, Vojtěch Kovář, Jan Michelfeit, Pavel Rychlý, and Vit Suchomel
2014 “The Sketch Engine: Ten years on.” Lexicography 1(1): 7–36. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Locher, Miriam A., and Richard J. Watts
2005 “Politeness Theory and Relational Work.” Journal of Politeness Research 1: 9–33. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lorenzo-Dus, Nuria, Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, and Patricia Bou-Franch
2011 “On-line Polylogues and Impoliteness: The Case of Postings Sent in Response to the Obama Reggaeton YouTube Video.” Journal of Pragmatics 43(10): 2578–93. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mancera Rueda, Ana
2014 “Cortesía en 140 caracteres: Interacciones en Twitter entre periodistas y prosumidores .” Revista de Filología 32: 163–80.Google Scholar
Mancera Rueda, Ana, and Ana Pano Alamán
2013 El discurso político en Twitter. Barcelona: Anthropos.Google Scholar
Mills, Sara
2003 Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Moulinou, Iphigenia
2014 “Striving to Make a Difference: Linguistic Devices of Moral Indignation.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(1): 74–98. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Mugford, Gerrard
2014 “Examining First-Order Localised Politeness: Mexican Positive Impoliteness Practices.” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict 2(1): 99–126. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2018 “Critical Intercultural Impoliteness: ‘Where Are you Located? Can you Please Transfer me to Someone Who is American?’” Journal of Pragmatics 134: 173–182. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Murillo Medrano, Jorge
2006 “Significado de la cortesía lingüística a partir de la aplicación de un test de hábitos sociales en Costa Rica.” In Actas del II Coloquio del Programa EDICE, edited by Jorge Murillo Medrano, 116–36. San José: Universidad de Costa Rica.Google Scholar
Nevalainen, Tertu, and Heli Tissari
2010 “Contextualizing Eighteenth-Century Politeness: Social Distinction and Metaphorical Levelling.” In Eighteenth-century English: Ideology and Change, edited by Raymond Hickey, 133–58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Ogiermann, Eva, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich
2019 “Im/politeness between the Analyst and Participant Perspectives: An Overview of the Field.” In From Speech Acts to Lay Understandings of Politeness: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives, edited by Eva Ogiermann, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 1–24. New York: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Pano Alamán, Ana
2015 “Ironía verbal y actividad de imagen en el discurso de políticos y ciudadanos españoles en Twitter.” Pragmática Sociocultural 3(1): 59–89. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Placencia, María Elena
2001 “Percepciones y manifestaciones de la (des)cortesía en la atención al público: El caso de una institución pública ecuatoriana.” Oralia 1: 177–212.Google Scholar
2008 “(Non)compliance with Directives among Family and Friends: Responding to Social Pressure and Individual Wants.” Intercultural Pragmatics 5(3): 315–44. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria
1992 Politeness Phenomena in England and Greece: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
2015 “Conceptualizing Politeness in Greek: Evidence from Twitter Corpora.” Journal of Pragmatics 86: 25–30. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2019 “Conflict, Disagreement, and (Im)politeness.” In The Routledge Handbook of Language in Conflict, edited by Matthew Evans, Lesley Jeffries, and Jim O’Driscoll, 176–95. London: Routledge. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria, and Spiridoula Bella
2019 “Twitter, Politeness, Self-presentation.” In Analyzing Digital Discourse: New Insights and Future Directions, edited by Patricia Bou-Franch, and Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 341–65. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Sifianou, Maria, and Angeliki Tzanne
2010 “Conceptualizations of Politeness and Impoliteness in Greek.” Intercultural Pragmatics 7(4): 661–87. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charlotte
2015 “Beyond Sarcasm: The Metalanguage and Structures of Mock Politeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 87: 127–41. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Tracy, Karen
2008 “ ‘Reasonable Hostility’: Situation-Appropriate Face-Attack.” Journal of Politeness Research 4(2): 169–191. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
van Dijk, Teun A.
1998 “Opinions and Ideologies in the Press.” In Approaches to Media Discourse, edited by Allan Bell, and Peter Garret, 21–63. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Verschueren, Jeff
2000 “Notes on the Role of Metapragmatic Awareness in Language Use.” Pragmatics 10(4): 463–98. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Waters, Sophia
2012 “ ‘It’s Rude to VP’: The Cultural Semantics of Rudeness.” Journal of Pragmatics 44(9): 1051–62. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J.
2003 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Watts, Richard J., Sachiko Ide, and Konrad Ehlich
1992 Politeness in Language: Studies in its History, Theory and Practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Zappavigna, Michele
2011 “Ambient Affiliation: A Linguistic Perspective on Twitter.” New Media and Society 13(5): 788–806. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017a “Evaluation.” In Pragmatics of Social Media, edited by Christian Hoffmann, and Wolfram Bublitz, 435–58. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2017b “Twitter.” In Pragmatics of Social Media, edited by Christian Hoffmann, and Wolfram Bublitz, 201–224. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar